Is Bowling a Sport?

I had never heard of David Whitley until today. But professional bowler and PBA.com columnist Andy Morton has definitely brought this self-professed "male chauvinist pig" onto my radar screen with his article today attacking a piece Whitely wrote at fanhouse.com that disparages bowling as a sport.

Whitely's article, "Chris Barnes: The Guy Who Lost to a Girl," essentially argues, if I'm not being too charitable in calling it an argument, that while Kelly Kulick is to be commended for beating the world's best male bowler, even if hardly anyone had ever heard of Barnes before Kulick beat him last Sunday, we shouldn't make too big a deal out of it since bowling, after all, is not a real sport. Why not? Because any contest in which an adult human female can beat an adult human male doesn't rise to the exalted level of sport and doesn't deserve to be honored as such. Not only that, but it's ludicrous that the NCAA acknowledges it as a sport and hands out national bowling titles to schools. Whitely concedes that bowling may require "flexibility, strength, concentration and years of personal sacrifice," yet "So does ballroom dancing, but you don't see the NCAA handing out championship trophies in that." Whitely concludes by sarcastically stating that he hopes millions of girls will now "get off their duffs" and aspire to be NCAA bowling champions and to compete with men at just about everything.

I think Whitley is full of it. I don't think he understands the first thing about how demanding and athletic bowling is on a physical and mental level when you reach the rarified heights of amateur and professional competition. But I guess he speaks for most people. Most people have no idea of what bowling is all about at the stratospheric altitude of a Kelly Kulick or Chris Barnes. If they did, they would never say the kinds of things Whitley says in his article.

What do you think? I know that if you're reading this, you're probably biased in favor of bowling, but do you think that bowling is or is not worthy of being called a sport? How do you define "sport"? One dictionary definition I read is: "an activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively." Do you agree with this definition, and does bowling meet it?

After First Round of Match Play at TOC

Tony Reyes is leading the pack after the first 8 game block of match play, and Kelly Kulick is doing a beautiful job of hanging in there with the guys. She's in fifth place and a mere 55 pins off the lead. But can she keep bowling like this? She's qualified for match play in men's national tournaments before but couldn't sustain the pace in match play. Yet she was throwing the ball very well last night, went 4-3-1 in her matches, and seems very confident. It would be sensational if she made the televised finals of this hallowed tournament or even won it. I think the PBA's powers-that-be are praying for this to happen so they can reap the rewards of the ensuing publicity.

Speaking of publicity, Tom Smallwood continues to receive his share after his victory a few weeks ago. Almost everyone knows the story of how this laid off GM worker qualified for match play in a tournament at the WSOB, proceeded to bowl his way into the televised finals, turned down a job offer at GM just before he bowled in the finals, and went on to win the championship. His story has been featured in all kinds of media ever since, and, as reported last night on Xtra Frame, there's a writer from Sports Illustrated following him around this week to do a story on him for the king of American sports magazines. And if Kelly Kulick makes it to the televised finals, it looks like he's going to have more work to do.